Warriors

Relatively important long-range information: The Warriors are not “hard-capped” now, even though they’re over the $125M luxury-tax apron and they’re not likely to be hard-capped next July, either.

Which means that the Warriors still are in good shape to re-sign Patrick McCaw next year when he becomes a restricted free agent because they will still be protected by the Gilbert Arenas Rule regarding second-round picks who become RFAs.

You lose that protection if you’re hard-capped.

Got all that? I study this stuff, I write about this stuff, and that part still is confusing to me, and when I’m confused I often turn to The Athletic’s Danny Leroux, who is, among many other things, a salary-cap expert and somebody who is always helpful when I check with him.

OAKLAND–Let’s just say it: You’re not going to get more and better details about the Warriors’ contract negotiations and surprises than this conversation right here with GM Bob Myers.

For instance, Myers details exactly when and how Kevin Durant and his agent approached Warriors management with the idea of taking about $25M this season — less than his true max salary and $6.8M less than even the number he could’ve made to keep the Warriors’ payroll flexibility — and what his own reaction to it was.

And Myers explains what that meant for the rest of the free-agent period, especially for re-signing Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston and even to using more money to sign Nick Young.

Durant’s give-back was the key to the whole thing because it was made with a sense for the Warriors’ true tax-paying budget.

The Warriors are way, way over the luxury-tax line, but there’s a limit to how far Joe Lacob was going to go over (they’re going to end up paying about $185M in combined salary and tax this season), and Durant realized this, Myers said.

Tying up some loose ends as the NBA’s draft-trade-movement period begins in earnest tonight, and I expect the Warriors to buy a second-round pick because that’s just what they do…

* Last night several national publications reported that the league has informed teams that this year’s salary-cap and luxury-tax numbers will actually be $99M/$119M, which is a $2-3M drop on both sides from recent estimates.

So you want to know: How does this drop affect the Warriors’ intentions to re-sign Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, presuming Kevin Durant is taking the 20% raise in a 1 + 1 deal and Stephen Curry is signing long-term?

Answer: Unless there’s some back-door effect that I can’t see, the cap/tax numbers dropping won’t change the Warriors’ situation very much, if at all.

Steve Kerr and I had been talking for many minutes — and not boring minutes, I don’t think — on this podcast episode before I brought up the mini-controversy surrounding the Warriors potentially declining or not getting the traditional invitation to the White House for a championship team.

And that’s when Kerr surprised me, not for the first time, with a slightly different viewpoint on this than I was expecting.

Kerr said the team hasn’t gotten an invitation from President Trump yet, and he knows they might not get one, and it’s up to the players, not him…

But Kerr said that he would want his players to consider accepting such an offer as a sign of respect for the office and a gesture towards some sort of general national unity.

Very good of Marcus Thompson II to stay embedded on the Warriors championship parade route for 24 hours so he could give us all the feel of the moment on our podcast today.

Or at least that’s what I think MT was doing — he was on Klay Thompson’s float yesterday, he got great backstage access, then I couldn’t find him until MT called us from his cellphone today, somewhere from Downtown Oakland.

Marcus talked about what it was like on the parade route, noted how Stephen Curry, in particular, seemed in a spectacular party mood, and then I asked MT about the continued back-and-forth between Draymond Green and LeBron James.

MT had a great answer for that: LeBron and Draymond are good friends, but….

I can’t help but think about that as I watch ESPN’s “Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies” two-part documentary runs right after the Warriors beat the Cavaliers in the two teams’ third straight NBA Finals meeting.

How will history look at this Warriors championship, coupled with their victory in 2015 and their loss last year?

And there’s nobody better to ask about this than ESPN’s Zach Lowe, the smartest/best writer covering this sport, and that’s exactly what I did for this podcast episode.

Zach also has written recently about how the Warriors’ “super-team” ascendancy is affecting other teams, and we talked about what Cleveland, Houston, Boston and others might be thinking this summer, while they look at the talent that the Warriors have accumulated.